THE POINT AND THE PUNCTURE

The Secret Life of a Photograph

Here I am in Melbourne, working on a new movie. After two months traversing across Nepal, Mustang and the Annapurna mountain range, this crowded, urban landscape is an unexpected change of scenery.

UNEXPECTEDNESS

I have been thinking about the journey through the landscape of a movie, the emotional choreography of the character arcs, the twists and turns of the story pathway, the way the director can navigate the map, letting us believe that we are going one way when actually we are heading in the complete opposite direction. This is the unfurling, unexpected aspect of the storytelling that keeps the audience emotionally pinned to the story.

Life is what happens while you are waiting for something else
— Albert Camus

I have written before about the importance of the crooked path, the sudden shift, the gear-changes between hopes, fears and expectations in a story. You can read more about this here, in my article Find an Angle, Take a Tangent. And here are a couple of pictures that speak t…